


The New York Enigma (Book I)

by teasoni



Series: Of Coat-Tails and Kestrels [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Assassin's Creed III - Fandom
Genre: American Revolution, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Endgame, Sexual Tension, Sharing a Room, Slow Burn, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-04-24 10:14:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19171216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teasoni/pseuds/teasoni
Summary: November, 1777: A young woman by the name of Marie de Verre is sent behind enemy lines as a spy for the Continental Army. Her past is obscure, her name unknown, and her reputation is built on betrayal and secrecy. She is swift, efficient, and inconspicuous, and her history of smuggling information from the British earns her the nickname of Washington's kestrel, a legend that is whispered along the winds of the Continental encampments. Haunted by her memories, she must race against time to help turn the tide of the war, risking everything she has to see justice exacted.February, 1785: The war is won and America is finally free from the yoke of King George III. But injustice and prejudice still poison the land, and despite the mounting power of the Colonial Brotherhood under Connor's careful tutelage, the inequity of the world still seems unassailable. Life for Connor has settled, but when two gravely wounded strangers turn up on his doorstep in the dead of night, he soon realizes that his fight against the Templars is far from over.[UNDER REVISION] see latest chapter for more details





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello?????????????????????????????? is anyone here???????????????????????????/ idek if anyone is into ac3 anymore but i am so here have whatever this is
> 
> i made a whole bunch of characters back in 2012 when the game first came out and i've been wanting to write something for them forever so. ya. this happened ig. will i ever finish it? we just dont know

They met for the first time on a blustery day in Boston. They were both there on business, his in blood and hers in knowledge, and the city was full and bright with noise. Boston had swelled and spread since the end of the revolution, becoming a mixing pot of all races and creeds. The sun beat down tirelessly, chasing away the last few lingering dredges of wintertime. Spring had brought incessant rains that clutched at the east coast, and now the wet streets steamed and the slate roofs gleamed, birdsong rising from the hills as the entire world came alive again. The winter had been long and difficult for everyone, especially those in the cities; grain was scarce and bread expensive to buy, forcing many families to live off scraps and whatever else they could scrounge.

There was a naïve part of Connor that he could never quite train into submission: a part that dreamed of peace and prosperity following the end of the Crown’s tyranny, a part that dreamed of freedom for his people and the ability to live in harmony with the white folk. Such things were foolish dreams, he knew that, and nothing had changed the way he had hoped. He saw that now, very clearly, and still felt that it was his fault. He should have done better. He should have done _more_.

But it was over, now. All he could do – all any of them could do – was look to the future.

A bureau for the Colonial Brotherhood had been set up in the heart of Boston and New York under Connor’s guidance. Their strength had swollen innumerably in the months following the expulsion of the redcoats, and what with Washington’s sturdy support they were met with little resistance; the Templar presence in the colonies fell apart after Haytham’s death, and the Assassins made quick work of whatever foxholes they had left, rooting them out like vermin. There was no joy in such things for him.

The streets of Boston grew hot by mid-morning, cloying in their humidity and pungency, and he grew restless; he planned to stay for only a day to collect tools and materials for the homestead. He could make the trip to Boston and back in a day on his own and with a good steed, but there was no cause for haste, and the weather was fair enough for him to make good time. And, for as much as he disliked Boston’s narrow streets and clogged gutters, it still retained a very particular charm that even he was not impartial to.

Wind howled along the boulevard by the docks, chasing up ladies’ skirts and plucking the hats right from their heads; the brittle trees, the smallest green buds only just beginning to sprout, bent and snapped with the force of it. Voices rose louder than usual to be heard over the wind’s howling and Connor, consumed in thoughts of the jobs he still needed to do, careened directly into an oncoming pedestrian with all the force and grace of a charging bull.

He _heard_ the wind knocked from her lungs. Connor’s tools spilled from his arms onto the street, as did a many number of apples and a parcel wrapped in paper, which fell directly into a puddle of much. Connor stooped to collect his tools, and crouched there on the street he glanced towards the spilled groceries to see a young woman hastily picking the parcel up and wiping it on the skirt of her dress, swearing something fierce. Her voice was quiet enough that none but Connor could hear, though seeing somebody dressed so neatly swear like one of Faulkner’s sailors was interesting in its own right.

He helped her collect her escaped apples and place them back into the basket he had overturned, and she offered him something of a smile, though exasperated and offset by a frown.

“I am sorry,” he told her. “I was not watching myself.”

The woman peered at him for a short moment before touching her hand to her brow and shaking her head. The first thing Connor noticed about her was her height; she was unnaturally tall for a woman, especially a white one, measuring only a few hands shorter than Connor himself. He was, too, struck by the blackness of her eyes; he could scarcely tell pupil from iris, even in the brightness of the sun.

“Neither was I, it would appear,” she admitted. Immediately, Connor knew she was no local, or at least had not been for long; her accent was not one he could place and seemed, at least to him, to speak of many places at once, as cryptic as a cipher. She shifted the load in her arms and took the last apple he offered her.

It was odd, standing at an impasse with this woman, who was dabbing gingerly at the underside of her parcel. She drew a deep breath, as though mustering her courage, and looked up at him, squinting against the sun and smiling. Her teeth were white and very straight.

“Thank you,” she said eventually after a few long moments of silence. “And good day to you, sir.” With a tip of her hat, she stepped around him and vanished into the crowd. Connor blinked at the place she had just been, yanked hastily from his daze. It was odd that a woman of so strange an appearance could slip away that swiftly.

The rest of his errands were finished quickly after that, and after organizing an envoy to collect the lumber from his mills, he headed back to the hitching station and loaded his fare into the saddle bags. His horse whickered happily against his hand when he reached out to stroke her nose, offering her a lump of sugar from his pocket. Both he and his mount - who had stood sweating beneath the thatched roof for many more hours than she would have liked - were both glad to be free of those choked city streets.

 

He arrived at the homestead just after dusk that day, having ridden hard from Boston with few rests along the way. His horse, thoroughly exhausted yet strong in spirit, was glad to return to her stable. Connor delivered the tools he promised Terry to his house, and delivered Ellen’s spools to hers, as well as all the other little trinkets he had agreed to pick up. It was a happy task – after all, these people were his family and did not get the chance to travel into the city as often as he did.

As true darkness descended and the trilling woodland fell quiet, Connor finally returned to the cool silence of the manor. Many, he knew, would dislike living alone in such a place, enormous and filled with shadows, but Connor found it to be something of a sanctuary. Nothing could get to him here. Enveloped in the manor’s walls, hidden below in the cool darkness of the cellar, was where he felt the most protected. The quiet held him steady.

The water left in the pitcher from that morning had grown lukewarm, but Connor splashed it over his face and neck all the same, scrubbing his hands clean again; only then was Connor able to retire to the solace of his sitting-room, where he sat upon Achilles’s great chair and stretched out his legs towards the grate. The hearth remained unlit even despite the nip of the springtime evenings; it was too much of a bother to maintain fires in all parts of the house, and given that Connor lived alone, he deemed it entirely unnecessary.

As he sat, he turned his notice towards the aching in his muscles; he’d grown so tired over this last winter. Perhaps he was just getting old, and yet there was something gnawing at his bones and his spirit that he couldn’t assuage, no matter how he tried. He spent days alone in the deep woods of the frontier, making an effort to grow closer to the homestead’s residents, going so far as to spend his afternoons with the children - but nothing worked. He wasn’t sure what had caused it, whether it was the weather or his age or the ever-growing responsibilities of his rank, and try as he might to push it to the back of his consciousness, it always rose to the surface.

He retired early that night and deigned to think of it no more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll probably update this on mondays!!! i've already written 25 chapters rip
> 
> this entire thing is un-beta'd... i might look into getting a beta later but i'm not sure yet :') thank you to those who left comments/kudos so far!!! i can't even explain how much it means to me <3
> 
> ps. please note that there may be some seasonal/time discrepancies, as i recently went back through this fic and reworked the timeline. let me know if i missed something or if something doesn't make sense!

_London, August 1775_

_London summers were always sweltering. Perhaps it was the close press of the buildings, or the rancid steam that rose from the Thames, or the endless sea of bodies that forever congested the streets. Those sensible enough would flee the city for the seaside, or the cooler, quieter countryside. But many were tethered to their duties in the cities and, thus, were made to endure it._

_“I cannot stand this heat,” Yvonne complained, clambering upon the window-seat beside her friend and hauling her skirts up above her knees. She pressed her knuckles to the windowpane and found the glass hot. “Disgusting. Marie, we must surely die before the month is gone.”_

_Marie smiled thinly, handing Yvonne a damp neckerchief. It was a trick her mother taught her: douse a kerchief in water, wring it out so it does not drip, and lay it about the throat. Yvonne took it gratefully and lay it across her collar with a sigh. The two girls sat there, watching the flow and ebb of the pedestrians on the street below the window, and just as a peaceful silence settled about them, the door opened._

_“Papa!” Yvonne exclaimed. The man in the doorway bowed, looking just as smart as always in his coat-tails, but he did not speak to his daughter. Instead he turned to Marie, presenting her with a letter. Slipping from the window-seat she went to him and took it. She did not recognize the penmanship nor the seal._

_“Thank you,” she murmured._

_“Come with me now, child.” The man held out his hand and Yvonne went to him, taking his arm and peering at Marie with wide, dark eyes. “You are needed in the kitchen. Leave the lady to her mail.”_

_Yvonne barely had a chance to protest before she was led away by the hand, the door of Marie’s room closing gently. Marie hesitated, waiting until the sound of footfalls and voices faded. She slipped her fingernail beneath the seal and broke it._

_The letter was not short, nor was it long – the hand was unfamiliar to her, which was a strange thing considering she was very well-acquainted with the penmanship of those who knew her address. It had been stamped; obviously ferried by ship. Abroad. She turned the letter over in her hands and her stomach lurched. It had come from America._

_She hastily drew out its contents and unfolded it. She read it once, twice, biting down on her tongue._

My esteemed Marie, _it read._

I apologize for sending you this letter without forewarning; my acquaintance to your family has been a recent discovery and I felt I ought to make myself known to you, and to extend an invitation of my good-will. My name is John Bolton, and while this may mean very little to you – if anything at all – it appears that my father worked very closely with your mother during her sojourn in America, and I have reason to believe they kept correspondence for a long time after this. My father’s letters recently came into my possession, and from them I have learned a great deal, the details of which you may also find intriguing.

I would very much like to meet you and discuss matters of business; I understand you are still young and (quite literally) half a world away, but I believe the skills you have would be of great benefit to my endeavors (and you must not think of me as selfish, I beg you – for my endeavors encompass many others and are, I can assure you, noble in their goals). I would also like to introduce myself as a friend, for my father kept close only those who were of noble heart, and I have reason to believe that you are of this strain also. I shall wait eagerly for your reply, and while I shall not press you, I do wish to mention that time is of the essence.

Your faithfully,

J. Bolton

 

 _No, no, the name meant nothing to her at all – she had never heard of_ Bolton _, and her mother had never mentioned him. But her mother never mentioned a lot of things, and remained choked with mystery, even to her own family. She looked back to the window, to the tall masts of the ships docked upon the river, and her heart ached with that familiar desire to seek new shores. She had never been to America before, and had fallen in love with all the romantic tales of the colonies there; she clutched Bolton’s letter in her hands and tried to keep hold of her reason. After a few tense moments, she finally felt she could breathe easily again._

_And, so, pinning her hair up from her neck to cool herself a little, Marie placed the letter down upon her desk, took a seat and a pen, and began to write._

* * *

 

Davenport Homestead, February 1785

 

There was an eagle that nested upon the manor’s roof in the springtime. It hadn’t always been there, and Connor couldn’t quite remember when it decided to make the manor its home, but to see it wheeling overhead in the high afternoons of March felt as natural as the breeze; a few years after it first appeared Connor climbed onto the roof to see the nest himself, and found a great whorl of twigs and bits of wool coiled together around two chicks, whose plumage was dark and downy. He remembered the gold of their eyes and the pink of their throats as their mother glided over the forest and the lake, her feathers gleaming against the sun. He sat on that roof for a while, beside the nest, and when the eagle returned to her children she merely perched on the chimney-cap and peered at him. Unthreatened. It was a fond memory.

It was these two eagle chicks – now fully-grown and with brilliant plumage of white and brown – that wheeled beneath the sun, their shrieking calls echoing across the hills. They dove down into the trees, flitting among the canopy like shadows, chasing the white coat-tails of a man leaping between the boughs; when gunshots alighted the forest, however, they shot back into the sky in fright.

Connor had risen before dawn wrought with restlessness that refused to settle. He dressed and left the manor in the darkness, plunging into the woods without so much as a whisper; it was as good a time as any to practice his tracking. The silence just before dawn, Connor thought, was always the most absolute. It was a time when the entire world seemed to lie asleep, hushed and unmoving, and he would sit awhile upon the earth and merely feel it breathe.

But as the towns of the frontier grew and inched ever closer to the homestead, Connor felt the world rest less often, always kept alive by the choke of coal-smoke and industry. The expansion had littered the surrounding lands with poachers that, at first, hadn’t been any more worrisome than picking off a flea every now and again – more recently, though, the hunters had come to these woods more often and in greater numbers. Connor would find trapped animals left to die, or carcasses left abandoned, or traps forgotten and left open for any wandering creature to stumble upon. They went from being a nuisance to being a danger.

And so, plagued as he was by unsettled nerves, Connor delved into the deep woods to hunt down the poachers he _knew_ were there. He’d seen the litter from their camp the day before, and supposed that their tracks would be easy enough to find in the snow.

They weren’t difficult to find.

The man they had put on guard sat snoring in his chair, his rifle resting across his knees. Their fire had burned to embers, now, little more than a warm glimmer among the ashes, and the rest of their party – five men, at most – were all sound asleep. Connor watched them from above, shrouded by the night and the branches; there was a pair of antlers nearby that had been viciously cut away from whatever unfortunate animal they had taken them from. He’d seen that animal – an old buck, enormous in size and with a long, wise face – laying abandoned near the trail leading north. A waste. It made fury coil tight in his gut.

The watchman was the first to be silenced. He toppled from his chair with little more than a gurgle, an arrow through his throat. Connor, still from above, picked them off one by one, raising no more fuss than a few faint wheezes. It was the last of them - the head of the party, Connor could tell - he decided to string up from the tree overhanging their camp as a warning to any others who might decide to hunt for sport in those woods.

Connor took the antlers with him back to the homestead, making a note to send out some boys to dismantle the camp later that day, and by the time the manor came into view the sky had lightened and the first hazes of light began to whisper through the trees

Hauling the buck’s antlers up the steps to the house, he set about cleaning up. It was bloody work, and as the sun rose he sat out the back of the manor and scrubbed the dirt and blood from his robes, watching as the sea blazed with the sunrise. He fingered the threads in his lap, which had become threadbare; Ellen had offered to mend his clothes, which he gratefully accepted, but he refused to let her make another set for him. His robes felt a part of him, as much as his hair or his limbs. They held memories. They held his spirit.

And so life on the homestead went as it always had. Myriam and Norris had brought a daughter into the world just before Christmas and were happier than Connor had ever seen them; David and Ellen were engaged the summer before, much to Maria’s delight, for she loved David in place of the father who had forsaken her. Their community was thriving, and in it Connor could see a glimmer of the peace and harmony he once dreamed of.

It was late morning by the time Connor wandered down to the inn. He found Oliver offloading barrels of drink with his wife, both their faces pink with cold and sweating from the weight of their load. He ducked below the barrel Corinne was trying to lift from the wagon, taking the weight across his shoulders and heaving it up. Corinne puffed and put her hands to her back, stretching with a heavy sigh of relief.

“Connor,” she said. “You’re a savior.”

“You should have asked me to help,” he chastised gently. Oliver turned from him and trudged to the door; Connor knew he was too proud to ask for any more help. _You’ve done more than enough for us,_ he’d told Connor. _We won’t be takin’ anything else from you_.

“The delivery was late, anyway,” Oliver told him as they ferried the barrels to the inn’s storeroom. “Some nasty business in New York, I hear.”

“New York?” asked Connor. He hadn’t heard anything, which was strange considering he made a habit of knowing all the goings-on around the area. “Recently?”

“Aye. Something to do with a bunch of _supposed_ Loyalists being evicted. Forcefully. The coachman mentioned a riot. Here – he gave me this. I’ve not had time to read it.”

Oliver patted down his pockets and pulled forth a folded tabloid; he handed it to Connor, who unfolded it and read the front article quickly. Right there, in bold, unmissable print, read: NEW YORK STARVES, POPULACE AT BREAKING POINT! Aside from the hunger, it detailed the expulsion of sympathizers, and while Connor knew this to be a tabloid of rather mild opinion, it gave no quarter in its descriptions.

Connor frowned at the paper, and Oliver, reading his expression clearly, said, “I don’t think it’s any trouble, really. Just the boys’ blood running too hot with that good old American spirit.” And then he laughed, though Connor couldn’t quite understand why; Patriots had been bullying immigrants from the Isles, Loyalist sympathizers or not, ever since they’d secured their victory over the British. Many innocent families had ended up battered or homeless thanks to it.

As Connor and Oliver unloaded the wagon, Corinne stepped aside and, quite suddenly, caught sight of someone standing watching them. She wandered over to where Terry was waiting by the road, twisting his cap between his hands, and she wiped her hands on her apron.

“You look awful nervous,” she said, nodding to his hat. He shifted it behind his back. “Is something amiss?”

Terry shook his head and rocked to and fro on his heels. “No, no, nothin’ like that, see -,” He rubbed a hand across his head and sighed again, and Corinne knew that something was _definitely_ amiss. He took her elbow and led her a little farther down the road, lowing his voice until she had to lean in just to hear. “It’s Diana’s birthday, see. Three evening’s from now, an’ I know she don’t like celebratin’, but -,” here he glanced over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t overheard “- she’ll be forty this year an’ I want to do somethin’ nice.”

At the thought of a party Corinne’s face brightened and all fatigue seemed to vanish. She took Terry’s hands into hers and squeezed them. “Terry, of course we have to do something for her! Oh, we shall hold a party for her, of _course_ we will!”

“You mustn't tell nobody.”

“I won’t!” Corinne turned and cupped her hand to her mouth. “Ollie! We’re having a party!”

“Corinne –,”

Corinne half-dragged Terry to where Oliver and Connor were hitching the wagon. Oliver, upon seeing his wife’s face flushed with joy, frowned.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “What’s all this party nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense, Ollie!” Terry jabbed her with his shoulder and her voice pitched to a low murmur, heads bent low in conspiration. “It’s Diana’s birthday in three days’ time. Forty years old, can you believe it! An’ Terry, bless his heart, he suggested we have a party for her. I say we have it here, in the inn.” Corinne looked to Oliver, who was stroking his chin in thought.

“I suppose,” he said eventually. “Three days, you say?”

“That’s right.”

“Could be good for business,” Oliver murmured. Corinne beamed.

“It’s settled, then! It’ll be a surprise party. We’ll invite the whole homestead – oh, Diana’ll love that! I’ll be sure to send word to Catherine. I hear she’s a wonderful baker.”

Connor glanced between the bright faces around him and said nothing until Corinne turned to him and asked, “You’ll be coming, won’t you, Connor?”

A pause passed between them, and all gazes settled upon his face, forcing Connor to bite back a shiver of discomfort. They were well aware of his nature, and how he had little love for parties or events. But Diana wasn’t just a _person_ , she was part of his family. They all were.

“Of course,” he said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”


	3. Chapter 3

_London, January 1776_

_Marie could not sleep. Her bedroom was empty and cold, and while she detested the summer, she could not help but miss it when the Christmastime storms blew in from the north; the world was little more than a grey flurry beyond her window, and sleep refused to come._

_With quiet feet she slipped out of her bedroom and through the darkened house. Marie had always had an odd talent for moving as swiftly and silently as a shadow, with footsteps that barely whispered, and a sense of direction that never failed her. She took no candle or lamp with her; she could navigate her way through the dark as well as a cat. She thought of John Bolton’s letter, locked in her desk drawer, and of the letter she had written him in return. In the months following that first instance of correspondence, they had exchanged a number of letters, most of them deceptively short and innocuous. But Marie was clever, and she saw his notes for what they were: tests, all of them, signals encrypted with courtesy. The very thought made her skin prickle with excitement._

I shall be frank with you, my dear Marie, _Bolton had written in his last letter, which had come not two days before._ This vein of correspondence is not safe. I trust you, and I trust in our connection of both blood and creed, and in doing so I risk both my life and the lives of those I care about. I have a contact in France you must meet – he shall be joining us in the colonies imminently and I have the need for someone to take his place and open a channel to Versailles. I know this is much to ask of you, but my company is failing, and I have very few options left. For now, this is my farewell; adieu, and may God’s grace be with you. Make haste.

 

_Marie had not slept since. Even now, walking aimlessly around the slumbering house, she thought of his letter; the small etchings around the edges of Bolton’s paper would appear as decorations to all but those who had been trained in their design, as Marie had, many years ago. She held the letter to the light of the candle, tilting the paper until it became translucent, inspecting the markings until she wrought meaning from them. That was how she learned so much about John Bolton and his cause._

_It was true that he exercised incredible risk writing to her as he did. Had she been anybody else of lesser connection, he would not have done it. But the histories of their families were long and inextricable, and he had found her upon a stroke of pure luck._

_She could not hear him praying that he had made the right choice, but something in her soul smarted whenever she read his letters, an old tug of allegiance that she had abandoned long ago. But John Bolton incensed her, speaking of injustice and oppression in the intricate borders of his stationery, and it stoked a passion within her that she had not felt for a long, long time._

* * *

 

 

Davenport Homestead, February 1785

 

The prospect of a party threw the homestead into raptures. Diana became suspicious of something, though was thankfully kept ignorant of their plans. Maria was perhaps most delighted of all – Ellen told the others how her daughter would sit up late into the night and, by nothing more than the light of a candle, would sew banners of bright colors for them to hang in the inn. Even Ellen and David’s wedding had been stalled in the lead-up to Diana’s birthday.

The weather, too, remained forgiving. Bright winter sunshine made the snow banks glow, and children ran screaming with laughter down the lanes and around the tree line, lobbing fistfuls of snow at one another. Spring was slowly waking beneath the snow, and Connor knew the thaw would come earlier this year.

“Thank you for your help, dear,” Corinne said as he helped her hang Maria’s banners. “Lord only knows you’re the tallest man on this here homestead. Got giant’s blood in you, I’d wager.”

Connor chuckled and stepped down off the chair he’d used to reach the rafter. A banner of pink and white fluttered in neat triangles above them. He’d never seen Corinne as happy as she was planning a party, and he found it rather charming. “Or perhaps you are just small.”

Corinne laughed and smacked him with her dishtowel. “The cheek! Go on, off with you.”

The air was fresh with rain from the night before, and birdsong echoed about the hills. The eagles were sunning themselves upon the slates of the manor’s roof, and as Connor made his way back, he saw Diana and Catherine by the river with their feet in the water and skirts tied up around their hips, basking in the sunlight and chatting. Their children were there as well, frolicking about in the water and on the shaded bank.

In comparison to the rest of the homestead, the manor was oddly quiet. Its walls shut out the birds and the wind just as well as it shut out the sounds of laughing children and wagon wheel. It was lonely, in a strange kind of way. The house stood large and empty upon the knoll, even more now that Achilles was no longer there to occupy it. It was just Connor.

“You ought to get a dog,” Myriam had suggested to him once. “A nice big, furry one. A hunting dog, maybe - you could even get more than one. They’d be good company.”

But Connor didn’t want to confine dogs to the house, nor did he need any. He was perfectly capable of hunting on his own, and while dogs were certainly friendly animals, he didn’t quite feel prepared to deal with the mess.

Besides – he’d become used to being alone by now.

 

The day before Diana’s birthday party, however, Connor received an urgent message from Boston, delivered at dawn by a frantic rider. By his horse – which stood sweating and quivering at the foot of the road – Connor knew he had ridden hard and without pause. The rider bore a message from Samuel Adams, a man that Connor had not seen in many months and did not really expect to see again; he was busy with his work in Philadelphia and had little time to help the Brotherhood, though he and Connor remained friends and allies both.

 

 _Connor,_ Adams wrote, _I hear I missed you in Boston. Undoubtedly you have heard of riots in New York concerning hunger strikes and the expulsion of Crown sympathizers, but I have reason to think this was a deliberate act sparked by a third party. I implore you to ride to Boston as swiftly as you can lest something of a more insidious nature come to pass. Tempers grow volatile._

It was hastily written, Adams’s usually neat cursive little more than a scrawl. Clenching the parchment in his fist he turned to the messenger, who watched him closely, concerned.

“Rest here as long as you will,” Connor told him. “You have done well bringing this to me. I will make for Boston at once.”

There was no time to excuse himself; he saddled up one of his swiftest horses and was diving through the frontier within the hour. The letter itself was not worded with urgency, but Connor knew that if Adams himself had chosen to pen and send such a hastily-written letter then something was deeply amiss. Adams had his own concerns to attend to and rarely required such haste, least of all from Connor, who he knew was entirely capable.

He rode into Boston that afternoon, urging his mount on until he reached the entrance to the bureau. It was an unassuming building, indistinguishable from the townhouses on either side, and after slipping from his saddle he let himself in through the cellar entrance as not to draw any undue attention.

“Connor, good, you’re here.” It was Sam Adams himself who greeted him, his face far more worn and weathered that Connor recalled from his youth; the war had been hard on him, though his eyes smiled and he shook Connor’s hand firmly. “I’m sorry to call you so suddenly.”

“What is this about?” he asked, never one to bother with formalities. Adams, he knew, appreciated this. “I have seen the headlines that speak of New York and the discontent there.”

Adams led him through the dimly-lit rooms, filled with books and maps and some of Franklin’s more useful inventions; other recruits slipped among the shadows, soundless as cats, engrossed enough in their own work that they paid little heed to Connor. The few that did recognize him nodded politely and did not interrupt.

“We have reason to believe that the discontent is not merely a coincidence,” Adams continued. “As I said, this has all been a rather recent discovery, which is what concerns me the most.” He reached out, pushing open the door to his study, and held it aside for Connor to enter. “Drink?”

Connor declined, choosing instead to sit in one of the chairs at Adams’s desk. He could not afford to let bourbon addle his awareness. “Keep going.”

Adams took a drink from his tumbler before sitting down across the desk and folding his hands over his belly. “Our efforts in New York have been steady and successful, in no small part thanks to you. We have ears to the ground in all places and very little goes on in that city without us knowing about it. The winter has been difficult on everybody, yes, but Santiago began to notice that supplies of grain were being intercepted on their way to the city. Or so she said.”

Camila Santiago was the woman Connor assigned to lead the New York Bureau at the end of 1783. She had moved to America from the West Indies as a teenager, and she had a spirit as bright and passionate as the sun. It had been Adams himself that found her in the first place after she’d beaten off five men single-handedly and with no weapon after they cornered her in an alleyway. He had been so impressed by her, in fact, that he had taken her directly to Connor and recommended she be initiated. Santiago, destitute and hopeless and angry, had accepted. She took to the cause of the Brotherhood like a flame to kindling and Connor trusted her almost as much as he trusted himself. Many of the men, however, did not like her – they found her brash and outspoken, but Connor recognized it was merely prejudice that fueled them, and did not concern himself with their complaints. Those who knew Santiago understood her, and that was all that mattered.

“Why was this discovered only recently? Grain has been scarce for months.”

“Because the perpetrators are deceitful and, apparently, very clever in their subterfuge. Santiago only got her hands on one of their letters a day or two ago after one of her scouts went missing. It’s rather concerning, and while it poses no apparent link to the grain supply being stalled, I suspect that they are connected somehow. Santiago is inclined to agree. She sent a copy.” Producing a letter from a drawer of the desk, Adams handed it to Connor.

 

 _In three nights’ time we shall light the pyre,_ it read. _Under the guise of chaos we will root out rotten blood and purge this place of its poison._

 

The letter was neither addressed nor signed. Its words were cryptic and open to many interpretations; the way it was written was, indeed, code-like, but these kinds of letters were the most dangerous, for they could mean anything.

“We don’t know when it was sent,” Adams told him. “For all we know, this ‘lighting the pyre’ business could have already been instigated. If not, then it shall be done so very soon.”

“Perhaps it is a scheme against the Loyalists?” Connor suggested, doubtful as he was. Adams did not seem to believe it either. “The crown no longer holds sway over the region. The only tyranny to speak of would be the Patriots, surely.”

“There was a wax seal, but it had been broken already by the time Santiago received it. It may have afforded us with a little more information, but it’s better than nothing.”

They sat in pensive silence for a number of minutes, thinking. Why intercept the supply of grain into the city? What purpose was there in starving the populace? Lingering traces of Loyalist sympathies was the only real suspect, and it would make sense for the people to ruminate in paranoia; but, possibly, such paranoia could have been seeded on purpose.

Connor turned the letter over in his hands. It was written on fine paper, thick and silky to the touch, but plain. The penmanship was also of a high quality, as was the ink and the pen used to write it, speaking of influence and, most likely, money. It did not seem to be the correspondence of a destitute crowd, and spoke irrefutably of a third party or some sort of outside plan.

“The discontent in New York concerns the poor and unemployed,” he murmured. “This letter does not speak of that caliber.”

Adams chuckled. “Ah, yes. That’s precisely why we suspect a third party.”

There was very little to do other than wait for more evidence to surface, though Adams’s concerns were settled a little by Connor’s presence. “I believe in you wholly, Connor,” he said, clapping Connor on the shoulder and shaking his hand once more. “I hate to depart so suddenly, but I am needed in Virginia. I will keep my eyes open, though, and will comb my connections for any useful information.”

Connor saw Adams out. He knew why Adams was concerned in these matters – the mere whispers of Loyalist involvement attracted the attention of his party, and whenever his own intentions aligned with hat of the Brotherhood, he was certain to help. The Brotherhood was an integral and far-reaching resource, and Adams was not stupid enough to let it slip through his fingers.

That evening, alone in the dim light of his own study, he penned a letter to Santiago. He had received no letters from her, but one of the clerks informed him that she’d spent most of her time outside the city trying to track down the source of she ships intercepting the supply. Her scouts kept their eyes on the city, but nothing had come up.

 _We must wait,_ Adams had said before he left. _As much as I hate to admit it. So many things are waiting games, these days._

He did not sleep easy that night. The following day he lingered until mid-morning, but when no word came of strife, he deigned to return home; he still had pressing tasks there, what with administrative work that never seemed to end and the repairs to be done on the manor, and he had left much of his intel in the cellar. He itched to ride to New York, but he knew that Santiago was capable of handling things herself with all the brisk efficiency he could ask from her, and he hoped that the messenger he had sent to deliver his letter found no harm along the way.

 

Worry dogged him the whole way back to the homestead. His old wound – deep in his side, from the day he had confronted Lee inside the burning shipyard so many years ago – troubled him. By the time he arrived back at the homestead it was well past sundown, the trees dark and still, the moon heavy and shedding bright, unobscured light across the woodland. It cast mottled shadows that moved like creatures among the grass, and Connor’s horse gladly slowed to a trot as they descended the slope of the valley, the thudding of its hooves scarcely audible over the rush of the ocean beyond.

A glance at the moon told him that it was already late; the party, of which he had completely forgotten, would have begun hours ago. He was tired and sore and rife with worry, but it did not feel right to forgo his friends so entirely, and so he paused only briefly at the manor before diving once more into the night.

He arrived at the inn a little out of breath and still in his uniform, but the bright glow of the windows and the din of the party from inside lifted his spirits immediately.

“It’s Connor!” Godfrey cried, raising his tankard in greeting as Connor let himself through the front door. The joyous faces of his friends turned to him, and the children all cried out in delight at his coming and threw themselves towards him. He greeted each of them in turn, laughing, before going to kiss Diana on her cheek and bestow upon her the gift he had brought from Boston.

“Oh, you dear boy!” Diana unwrapped her gift, beaming: it was a silver hair-pin with a shimmering garnet set at its head, cushioned in crepe paper. She uttered a gentle _oh_ before throwing her arms around Connor and almost bringing him to his knees with the force of her embrace. “Thank you so much, dear! I shall treasure it always.”

Oliver ushered Connor to a seat at the table, fixing him a plate of food from the spread, including a generous mug of ale. Norris, who had brought his fiddle, stood among the children as they danced to his tune. Even the unfamiliar faces of travelers were merry, and they sang along to Norris’s songs and wished Diana well for the next year. The singing from inside the Mile’s End grew, accompanied by rancorous laughter and stamping feet, sending everybody into wonderful spirits. Even Father Timothy was there, though he did not linger long, saying that he found the festivities a little overwhelming.

In the festivities nobody noticed the hammering at the door. It was only by chance that it was eventually heard at all, for David and Ellen stood by the door as they watched Maria dancing on Warren’s toes, drinking and laughing and murmuring sweet things in one another’s ears. Ellen, her hearing sharp as ever, turned and peered out the window when she heard the knocking. The door was not locked – there was no reason to hammer so.

It was David who answered the door, curious as to who it could be this time of night, and what could spur them to such urgency; when he opened the door he came face-to-face with a woman, doubled over and smeared with mud all across her waist and her bodice and her face. Her hands were wet with it, and she was shaking with cold.

“I am terribly sorry,” she managed between clenched teeth. Her breath wheezed, the sound worryingly wet. “I –,” Her hand moved to clutch at the door frame, and upon the white paint David saw that she was covered not in mud, but in blood.

The others, alerted to the disturbance by the door, grew quiet and peered towards where David stood, the bulk of his body hiding whoever had come to the door.

A heartbeat of near-silence passed as Norris’s fiddle music died, broken only when Ellen shrieked. Everything seemed to move very fast after that.

A ripple passed through the room and those around the table lept to their feet. David staggered back, and when he turned they saw that he held a body in his arms, pale and as limp as a corpse.

“Lyle – !” David hollered, breaking the glaze of surprise that had fallen over them. All the festivities lay forgotten as the party-goers vaulted from the table; Prudence and Catherine gathered the children away, and with Diana they moved them upstairs and away from the ruckus. Lyle was the first to reach the door, though was followed closely by the others.

“Space, I need space!” he barked at them. David lowered the woman – who was lapsing in and out of consciousness – to the ground and lay her on her back, prying away her hands, which clutched at her side. Her skin was sticky with blood. He took his spectacles from his pocket and inspected the blood-soaked fabric, tugging at the fringes of it and swatting David back so he could shed light upon the wound.

“I apologize –,” the woman wheezed through her chattering teeth, and as a lamp was brought to Lyle he saw that she was sweating profusely.

“Hush, now,” he said. “No talking.” He turned to Diana, who had returned to help the doctor where she could. “There’s a musket ball in there,” he told her. “Not too far, though, I don’t think. Something to be said for all the clobber you ladies wear.”

Had there not been a woman bleeding out on the floor, Diana would have smacked him.

“Connor,” Lyle called. “Come help me move her to one of the rooms. We’d best get this out as soon as we can.”

Connor moved forwards, but before he could take more than a few steps the woman let out a shuddering gasp, her eyes leaping open, pupils enormous and black. “No, no, my father, he –,”

Her eyes. Connor knew her eyes – only once before had he seen eyes so black and depthless. He glanced over her face, the familiar angle of her jaw and the stern set of her forehead, and he checked the length of her body against the other women. He had met her before.

“Easy, now, love.” Diana took the woman’s hand and smoothed the hair back from her face. “We’ll get you all fixed up in no time.” She turned to Terry and Godfrey, both of whom were now suitably sobered. “Go and look outside, see if there’s anyone else.”

The two men ambled out of the doorway. Terry unhooked the lantern from behind the door, holding it aloft as they ventured out toward the road. It was there they found a horse of magnificent size, glistening with sweat and standing upon shaking legs. It wore no saddle and no bridle, and upon its back sat a man with the horse’s mane clutched tightly in his hands; Terry and Godfrey drew closer, their steps measured with caution.

“Hullo?” Godfrey said. “Sir?”

When there was no response, he reached out and touched his hand to the man’s leg, causing a pallid face to turn in their direction. Without a single word, the man slid from the horse and landed in the dirt with all the grace of a sack of bricks.

“Doc!” Godfrey hollered as Terry thrust the lantern at him, going to crouch down by the collapsed man and feel for a pulse. “We got another one out here!”

“Go,” Lyle told Diana. “Connor and I will take her upstairs. Have Godfrey and Terry bring up the other, if by God’s grace they are still alive.”

Diana, her heart pounding, hurried outside to where her husband knelt beside the body. She felt for a pulse, checked the man’s temperature, and loosened his neck kerchief; he still seemed to be breathing. She crossed herself.

“Bring him upstairs,” she told the men, taking the lantern from them. “Come now, quickly!”

Inside the inn, Lyle and Connor set about carrying the woman up the stairs and to one of the bedrooms. They raised her gingerly, her body sagging between them, Lyle lifting her legs and Connor supporting her beneath the arms. They employed Warren’s help to support her waist and make sure the shot did not go any deeper. Her head rolled against Connor’s chest, eyes closed, now fully unconscious.

“Pray she remains so,” Lyle muttered. “Or else bring something for her to bite down on.”

Together they brought her to one of the rooms, already lit and aired by Catherine, who stood on the landing wringing her hands. “She don’t look so promisin’,” she murmured to Warren, who stood beside her. “Only young, too.”

Warren gazed after them. “I say Dr White is a mighty good doctor,” he replied. “She got a good chance yet.”

Nobody knew where the man and the woman had come from. In the light of the bedroom it became clear just how close to death the girl had danced - her skin had lost its color, her lips pale as a corpse. Lyle pored over her and shooed everyone from the room except Diana, who he assigned to the man’s care.

“A blow to the back of the head,” she told Lyle. “No way of tellin’ if there’s concussion until he wakes up. For now it seems he’s just in shock. Nothing a bit of brandy and a warm bed won’t fix.”

The woman, however, was in much worse shape. She’d been shot, and while the musket ball had missed anything vital, it was lodged stubbornly in her abdomen. Once Diana had made sure the man was comfortable, she moved over to the bed, which had been laid out with canvas to stop the blood from staining. Together they carefully extracted the musket ball, Diana soothing the girl whenever she stirred or let out low, pained moans. Diana gave her a spoonful of gin to settle her. Lyle mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief.

“Not the best way to end a party,” he murmured, and Diana chuckled.

“Such is life,” she replied. “At least _I_ wasn’t shot.”

The night grew later, and the children began to nod off; Prudence, Catherine, and their husbands excused themselves to take the sleeping children home, and slowly the others also left the inn, leaving their apologies to Diana as they did. Strangers murmured and speculated until they were run off by Corinne, and soon it was only Connor, Corinne, and Oliver left, aside from Lyle and Diana, who were still tending to the woman upstairs.

“Don’t feel like you need to stay, dear,” Corinne told him. “You must be tired.”

Connor looked uneasily towards the stairs and considered returning to the manor for the night. “No,” he replied eventually. “I will stay.”

He took station at one of the tables by the stairs, and Corinne brought him a drink – hot, this time, and without the alcohol – to tide him over until he decided to leave. With that, she and Oliver retired, and by the slant of the moon Connor knew it was well into the small hours of the morning. But he had endured worse than this, and curiosity kept him wakeful, his eyes wandering to the landing above.

The woman was familiar to him. He had met her in Boston that day when the wind seemed alive, shrieking over the mountains and in from the sea. He could recall her face so clearly: the darkness of her eyes and the gleaming of her teeth when she smiled. What on earth had happened between then and now? What strife had caught her? Questions whirled, dreadful and pressing, in his throat. She did not seem like a person disposed to trouble, not to getting shot – he thought of the poachers he had accosted upon his return from the city, and of when he first met Myriam; her arm had been shot through by such men. Maybe the same misfortune had befallen these strangers, too.

Eventually Lyle leaned over the banister. “You’re still here?’

Connor rose from his seat. When Lyle beckoned to him, he ascended the stairs and approached the open door with near-soundless footsteps.

“Stable, for now,” Lyle told him. Diana finished rolling up her tools, storing them in the bag that had been brought for them earlier. She joined them on the landing, her face flushed bright with the excitement and exertion of the evening.

“Did you find out what happened?”

“Not a word,” Diana said. “Neither woke, not the whole time.”

Connor leaned around Diana and peered through the doorway. The room had been dimmed and cleared of whatever mess was there before, and from the landing he could see the woman in a bed, her face turned to the side, hands unmoving over her belly. In the lamplight her hair was like a flame.

“Will they be all right?” he asked them. “Is it safe to leave them alone?”

Lyle sighed heavily and put his hands on his waist. “It’s hard to say. I’ll check in on them throughout the night, but they appear to be stable.” He looked over his shoulder. “Very curious.”

After bidding Lyle goodnight, Connor and Diana finally left the inn. “I am sorry that the evening was interrupted like that.”

Diana smiled kindly at him and laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t you apologize, Connor. There was no tellin’.”

He saw her back to her house, making sure she made it safely inside before making his way to the manor. He paused upon passing the inn again, reminded quite suddenly of the horse still standing beside it, grazing contentedly at the grass. He approached it, slowly, one hand held aloft. Upon realizing his presence, the horse raised its head and looked at him, unafraid. The closer he drew the more he saw just how enormous it was; the horse blinked at him, moving forward with no small measure of caution, tail flicking. Up close like this – even in the darkness – the horse’s coat gleamed, and he could see each long eyelash, the bright slash of white on its forehead, the velveteen sheen of its muzzle; as though it realized Connor’s gentle intent, it nosed at his hand, hot breath huffing against his palm.

It was a mare. A tall, proud mare unbefitting of its riders, as panicked and bloody as they were, her breath clouding in the cold air. He murmured to it.

Connor knew how to talk to animals. Not, perhaps, with words or language as he would with other humans, but there were ways of moving and breathing he had learned when he was very young. Ways of talking that used no words, that the men of the New World were unaware of. The mare followed him contentedly as he led her to his stables. She whickered nervously around the unfamiliar animals, but her fatigue and thirst finally won over, and she settled comfortably into one of the stalls.

He had been more tired than he’d realized, it seemed. Once he came to a stop in his bedroom his bones began to ache, and tiredness weighed against his eyes. He undressed in a daze before putting himself to bed. His sleep that night was black and lit with fire.


	4. Chapter 4

_France, March 1776_

_Crossing the Channel was never an easy task, nor was it a particularly enjoyable one. And yet it was a passage that ferried thousands between the coasts of England and France, an ancient site of trade and battle, and a sea that Marie was intimately familiar with._

_“You are_ not _going, and that is the end of it!” her father had said, punctuating his words with the meaty thump of his fist against his desk. Marie stood there, flushed with indignance, before swallowing down her anger and saying, sweet as can be, “Yes, father.”_

_She left during the night, taking passage on a fishing boat that she knew would draw no attention. She dressed plainly and carried very little. The journey was long and a little sickening, but she made it, waking at dawn with a smarting back and stomach made nauseous from the waves, to see the hazy silhouette of Marseilles on the horizon._

_Now France lay hard under her feet, and it was only a matter of a few days’ hard ride to Paris, then to Versailles, before she met Bolton’s man. She wondered what he would be like, but had no guess. Bolton had given away nothing, had given no instruction save that she should wear a red carnation upon her hat and a red neckerchief about her throat. This, he said, would single her out to his contact._

_By the time she arrived in Paris she was exhausted and famished and aching all over. She had friends in the city, naturally, but she could not tell them of her coming – she could not tell anybody. And so, she rented the rooms of an inn, small enough not to draw suspicion yet large enough to be of no discomfort. The first night in Paris she lay there in her narrow bed listening to her heart race. Things felt suddenly very real. It was only so long before the novelty faded, however, and fear crept into its stead._

* * *

 

 

Davenport Homestead, February 1785

 

Connor slept into the late morning, which was strange given that he rose with the sun by force of habit; but then again, the night before had been long and stressed, so it was hardly a wonder.

He was woken to the sound of voices and knocking. The angle of sunlight felt wrong; only then did he realize the time and, throwing himself from the bed, pulled on whatever clothes he could find.

“Connor, good morning,” Lyle greeted him with a tip of his hat. “We just wanted to let you know that those poor souls from last night are awake, if you wanted to stop by.”

Connor’s tiredness was slaked almost entirely. He straightened up, glancing over their heads in the direction of the inn, and nodded. “Yes. I will come and speak with them soon.”

The two men bade him farewell and left him to dress properly and wash his face and hands; waking so late had set Connor on a strange rhythm that felt, to him, entirely unnatural. He pressed onward down to the inn as soon as he was able, stopping only to check in on the new mare in his stable. She looked even more brilliant in the daylight, her coat a shade of shimmering beige that shone in the sun like gold.

The banners from Diana’s birthday celebration were still strung up when he arrived. Corinne was still tidying up from the night before, and she greeted Connor with a warm but nervous smile. “They’re just upstairs,” she told him with a nod to the landing. “Go on up.”

He did. He moved silently. Unnerved. The door stood ajar, and he pushed it open with more caution than was really needed; Lyle looked up when the hinges creaked and, seeing Connor, smiled and gestured him inside. Lyle led him towards one of the beds, in which the man sat, now propped up and awake, his head bound in a bandage. He looked haggard, and the color had not yet returned to his face, but his handshake was firm and his eyes were alert.

“George Morgan,” he introduced himself. “You’ll forgive me for not being on my feet. I’m neither quite so young nor so spritely as I once was.”

Connor took the chair Lyle offered, sitting by George’s bedside, leaning his elbows on his knees. He was eager to hear the man’s story – how had they come here? Where had they come from? How did they ever even end up in such a sorry state?

“I’ll leave you two to talk for a while,” Lyle told them. “The girl should be fine for the next few hours, but call me if you need to.” He left them, then, closing the door behind him as he left. George let out a hefty sigh.

“I’m terribly sorry for all of this,” he began. “It’s my understanding we caused quite a stir last night.”

Connor nodded, but his gaze was soft. “We do not often get gravely wounded women swooning upon the doorstep,” he agreed. “I would be interested to hear your story, if you are willing to tell it.”

George, however, merely grimaced. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you much, my friend,” he said. “It was upon me quite suddenly, and the last I remember of it was –,” here he paused, his eyes darting away, brow furrowing as though he was carding through the haze of memories. “Fire. And – well, I think I might have been struck at some point.” He touched his fingers gingerly to the back of his head. “Yes, almost certainly. I’m not sure how we ended up here, or by which route we came, or how we are even alive at all.”

“Where did you come from?”

“New York, I suppose,” George replied. “Since it’s the last place I can remember being.” He glanced over to the woman at the bed and his features softened in both grief and affection. “Of course she dragged me out alive.”

Connor followed his gaze to the woman. Her skin was dewy with sweat and Lyle had left a cool cloth across her forehead; he had cleaned, dressed, and bound the wound in her side, and while there was no infection, it appeared she still suffered from fever.

 _New York._ Adams’s voice jumped to the forefront of his mind. The letter, the cryptic words, the _pyre_ , George’s mention of fire –

“There was a riot?”

George, still quite bewildered, let out an uneasy laugh. “I really cannot tell you, sir. The last thing I can recall is taking my wine in the front room for a spot of reading, which I usually do before retiring for bed. I suspect that I was clubbed in my sleep, for the next thing I knew I was here.”

His ignorance, while not intentional, grated against Connor’s nerves. “And there was fire, you said? Where did you see it?”

“Oh, I could not tell you that either. It was very brief and I cannot say if it was reality or merely a dream.”

Connor rubbed a hand across his mouth and tried not to let his irritation show. George Morgan could not help what happened to him, and he was not at fault for his amnesia. Upon returning his attention to George, he found him gazing across the room at the woman in her bed, grief etched deeply into his face. “My daughter,” he supplied. “Dr. White told me she was shot.” He swallowed. “Said she’d most likely survive, but…”

“Lyle is a very good doctor,” Connor assured him. “If he says she will survive then I see no reason why she shouldn’t.”

George was silent for a long while. “I wish I could help you more, Mister…?”

“Just Connor.”

“Connor, then. I’m afraid we may have to wait for my daughter to recover a little before we find out.”

He tore his eyes from the girl’s white face and rose from his seat, the floor creaking beneath his weight. “You must rest for now,” he said. “We will sort everything out in due course.”

George’s expression sagged in relief. “Of course.”

 

When Connor descended the stairs he found Corrine and Oliver standing by the bar with their heads bent together, talking in low voices. They looked up when he approached him, however, and their concern was written clearly upon their faces.

“We talked to Dr. White,” Corinne said. “He told us about the girl. A few weeks until she’s ready for travel, he said, longer if she don’t heal proper.” She glanced at her husband. “Ought we to keep them here? We… we’re charitable folk, I like to think, but ever since my sister lost her house in the fire…”

“We don’t have much coin for hospitality,” Oliver explained. “Enough to run this place and live comfortably, aye, but -,”

“I will take care of it,” Connor found himself saying without having really thought about it; his response almost took him aback, and Corinne stared at him in surprise. “If they may stay here, I will organize the expenses.”

Corinne and Oliver looked at each other, and something seemed to pass between them - some sort of mutual understanding.

“All right, then,” Corinne said eventually. “If you’re sure. You’ve never led us astray before.”

 

The early afternoon was brilliant and clear. Connor, perturbed by what George Morgan had told him, went to the stables to assess the condition of the mare. She appeared perfectly unharmed, and after a closer inspection he found no instance of any wound, which was curious given the condition of her riders.

He clicked his tongue at her, stroking her nose and the white slash between her eyes. She pushed back against him, whickering. Friendly. The muscles in her forelegs and her neck were strong, rippling beneath her coat; it was obvious that she was well cared for, and her eyes shone with health. He checked her teeth and her hooves to find them in perfect condition.

Connor greatly desired to ride for New York immediately, but there was no way of telling when the girl would wake from her fever, and he wanted – _needed_ – to be here when she did. Whatever information she had would be pivotal to discovering what was going on.

He returned to the manor briefly and drew up another letter to Santiago, copying it for the Boston bureau as well, and sent it with one of his most fleet-footed messengers. The suspicion that someone was intercepting their mail was great, and Connor did not dare risk it. He detailed the arrival of the Morgans in his letter, telling her what George had said, and that the girl had not woken yet.

After the boy rode out for the frontier, Connor returned to the mare in his stables. He did not make a habit of letting unfamiliar horses roam free in the stable yard, but the way she looked at him piqued his interest; it was nearly human in nature. She went along happily, occasionally nudging at the back of his head. Her eyes were black as coal and wildly clever; she looked at Connor as though she knew him, nodding her head and stamping her feet, pacing around him. He did not saddle her. He did not bridle her. He merely stood beneath the sun as she pranced around him, tossing her mane and preening. _A proud horse,_ he thought. _A horse knowing of its beauty._

As the horse rounded him for a third time, Connor reached out and placed his hand upon her neck, using his weight to swing up upon her back; despite her enormous size, however, she was fast, and as soon as he had mounted her she threw him off with a powerful buck of her flank. He hit the ground and felt the air punched from his lungs. The horse threw her head again and laughed at him in a way only horses could, and Connor picked himself up from the ground to try again.

She threw him the next time he tried to mount her, and the time after that. She would wheel around him, and just when he thought he understood her movements, she would change them entirely. Connor, by right of his nature, did not concede defeat easily.

“You win,” he told her as he lay on his back, staring up at the sky. The horse stopped by his head and leaned down to send her hot, puffing breath across his face. She bit at his hair and he stroked her nose. _What spirit_.

He brought her back to her stall and stroked her strong neck once more before retiring to the manor, meaning to start on the repairs before the sun began to sink. It took concentration to balance, and he found it hard to keep his mind tracked on the task at hand. There was so much else going on – administration, the business in Boston and New York, the general unease that had settled across the land ever since the conclusion of the war, the expansion of the Brotherhood down towards Florida and further inland, George Morgan and his daughter –

He thought of George Morgan, with his graying hair and portly build, of his crisp voice and the words he had said.

_Fire._

Connor shivered as flames lept unbidden into his mind’s eye. He hated fire, always had, ever since his village had been put to the torch. In his distraction the hammer slid from his grasp and landed in the dirt two storeys below. Connor stared after it, unsure what to think. He wished the girl would wake up and give him answers – he knew, somehow, that whatever had happened to them was connected to the letter Santiago found. All that was left was to find out how.

 

It was a few days until the girl passed back into consciousness again. By that point her father had been deemed fit by Lyle to move about, and although his head was still tender where it had been struck, he seemed none the worse for wear. George seemed more than eager to help wherever he could, and Connor soon learned of his extensive education and knowledge of geology and ecology, as well as his time spent with the British Army before the war. Upon learning of the plague of illiteracy around the homestead, he tentatively offered to take the time to teach them – this was something they readily accepted, as they did not have the money nor the time to spend on outsourcing, and Connor was called away so often he never had the opportunity to do it himself. Even Father Timothy was too busy these days to teach such things, nor was he particularly fond of teaching the homestead’s boisterous children, and he gave his blessing to George in his endeavor. Yet no matter how busy his days became George always made time to visit his daughter, sitting by her bed for hours at a time, talking softly to her, or reading aloud. As though she could hear him. Connor wondered if she could.

Organizing their boarding in the inn wasn’t difficult; their homestead had been prosperous that year, mostly thanks to good luck and a plentiful harvest as well as rich game in the woodland surrounds. He had the money to spare, and it wasn’t often this sort of thing happened. There was something sympathetic in him, too, that pushed him into providing lenience he wouldn’t otherwise give. It was that sympathy, compounded with George’s uncanny knowledge and the girl’s gunshot wound, that allowed them to stay.

Connor soon learned that the woman’s name was Bethany Morgan, and that she had no siblings; George begrudgingly told him that his wife – Bethany’s mother – had perished in a house fire when the girl was young, and since then they had traveled the world together without regard for any sort of permanency.

He watched, curious as he ever was, as George made quick friends with the homestead. He had a dry, clever sort of wit to him, and was not shy – he respected everybody, and what Connor found most interesting was the way he respected the land, finding wonder in the old trees that stood higher than any steeple, and just as thick. He would lay his hand against their trunks and gaze skyward to their canopies, eyes wide, and expressed a deep interest in the native taxonomy and ecology. George spoke bitingly of Boston’s expansion, though he understood its necessity, and would sometimes complain of the coal-smoke.

“To be nestled here in the quiet,” he said to Connor some days later, “and amongst such wild land… it brings a freedom to me that the city never did.”

A few days after things finally seemed to settle, Bethany Morgan woke up.

Connor received the news around dawn. He had told Lyle to inform him if she woke up no matter what time it was, and so he sent one of the boys skittering up the hill to the manor, pounding at Connor’s door red-faced and out of breath.

“Is something wrong?” Connor asked, coming around the side of the manor, his whetstone still in his hand. Seeing him awake so early was hardly a surprise to anybody. The boy told him that the woman – Miss Morgan, he said, juvenile cheeks flushed – had woken up during the night, and that Corinne had found her conscious a few hours later.

Connor didn’t worry about his whetstone in the dirt or the oil on his hands. He followed the boy to the inn as quick as his legs would take him. Corinne was already waiting for him, and when he arrived, she ushered him through.

Lyle was there, of course, but aside from Oliver standing uneasily by the stairs, there was scarcely anybody else about. They talked in quiet voices so they didn’t wake the other patrons.

“Sensible enough not to try and get up,” Lyle muttered. “I’m sorry for rousing you so early, Connor.”

Connor waved off his apology. “It is no worry. I was up anyway.” He glanced towards the door. It was closed. “May I speak with her?”

“Aye. Her father’s in there, be warned. I wasn’t sure how much time I ought to give them.”

Connor paused and considered returning another time. But sympathy, he knew, must be forgotten in the face of necessity. He thought of New York, of what George had told him of it, of all the answers he had been waiting to get.

And so, gingerly, he let himself in with a gentle knock.

He hadn’t been sure what to expect. The girl had lapsed in and out of consciousness for the last few days, never quite awake enough to pass beyond dreaming, but she had just enough awareness to take water when it was offered. Her fever had risen and stayed high to the point where Lyle became unsure it would turn, but it did, allowing her peaceful sleep until her system recovered. And now she sat in her bed, propped up upon her pillows, talking to her father. George sat beside her and was holding her hands in his. She appeared to Connor as a ghost, or a spirit; her eyes were bright and wild, her hair vibrant with color and her face devoid of it. For the briefest of moments, she did not look human to him.

She met his eyes and fell silent. George, alerted by her sudden distraction, followed her gaze to see Connor standing in the doorway. He said something. Connor didn’t know what. He wasn’t listening.

Her face tightened at the sight of him and he knew, immediately, that she recognized him.

“Connor, this is Miss Morgan,” Lyle introduced her as he stepped into the room. “Miss Morgan, this is Connor, the overseer of this land.” He sent a rueful glance at Connor; Lyle knew how much he hated being named owner of the homestead or the land, for Connor believed that the land ought not to be owned by anybody, but it was difficult to explain such things to strangers.

Bethany held Connor’s gaze, nodding to him politely, her lips cracked and dry. “We are acquainted, I believe.”

Lyle looked between them, his brow wrinkled in surprise. Even George looked startled.

“We ran into one another in Boston,” she explained. “A pure coincidence.”

“Well I’ll be,” Lyle said. “Saves me the job of introductions, I suppose.” He glanced at Connor and shifted his weight from foot to foot. He knew how urgent this was to Connor, and was waiting for him to give the signal.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. His tongue was leaden in his mouth and refused to move.

“Thank you,” Bethany said, her voice quiet but sincere. It sounded strong, albeit raspy from disuse. She was healing. “For what you’ve done for us. It’s been a very long while since we have been afforded such kindness.” Turning to her father, she added, “I hope you’ve been nice to them.”

George laughed and squeezed her hand. “You know I have,” he promised her. And then she smiled a very small, very soft kind of smile, and Connor suddenly felt out of place.

“When you are feeling a little better, I would like to talk to you, if you are able,” he said.

“Of course,” she replied. “The moment I am on my feet again, rest assured I shall help you however I can.”

Connor had not been confused many times in his life. By virtue of his upbringing and his training he had always been observant and intuitive, and was able to read situations and circumstances for what they were. Now, however, his senses felt wrapped in cotton wool. He looked between George and his daughter, raised his hands uselessly from his side, and excused himself from the room.

On the landing, Lyle turned to him and said, “What was that all about?”

“What was what all about?”

Achilles would have hit him around the knees for that. Lyle, however, merely folded his arms and jerked his head towards the door. “ _That_. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

Connor shook his head. “Nothing like that.” He said nothing more - what could he say? Those eyes were alive in a way he had never seen before, as though all the life in her body had been concentrated into them, and in the weak dawn light she truly seemed like a ghost, and Connor entertained the thought of saying _I did_.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the radio silence! i'm in the process of moving overseas so everything's gotten a bit lost in the chaos :')

 

**_Versailles, March 1776_ **

_The invitation came out of the blue. It was written on shockingly ornate stationery, scented with roses and lavender, and for a moment Marie was quite sure it had been misaddressed. But then she remembered that nobody knew of her address save for John Bolton, and so this must be the signal she’d been waiting for. It was an invitation to a private house party of the Lady Veronique d’Auriac, whose property lay but a quarter-hour’s ride from Versailles. Presumably, this was where she was to meet the contact._

_With the letter came a box, plain and white and bound in a blue ribbon. She opened this next, finding a gown wrapped in crepe paper, with a red silk kerchief and carnation wrought of paper. She mused over the outfit, congratulating on Bolton – presuming he had chosen it – on his taste in fashion._

_The days passed quickly, and the night of the party was blessed with crisp and cloudless weather; Marie could see the twinkling lights of the d’Auriac estate as her carriage hastened toward it, the drive lined with well-groomed poplars and lavender hedges. The air smelled divine, alight with the fragrance of flowers and wood-smoke and ladies’_ parfum _. Inside the great house was even more miraculous – Marie knew of French extravagance, but had not been among it for many years. It astounded her, a heaven of silk and flowers and champagne, full of beautiful people in exquisite outfits._

_“Mademoiselle de Verre, I assume?”_

_Marie, having quite forgotten herself, was dredged from her thoughts by a voice speaking rather close for comfort; she did not start, instead turning to see a tall, lean young man dressed in a suit of blue velveteen. The buttons on his waistcoat gleamed almost as brightly as his smile._

_“Yes, that is I.”_

_The man took her hand and kissed her knuckles, then both her cheeks. “I find your outfit very fetching,” he said, and his French was like music, harmonious and smooth. He had charisma the likes of which Marie had never seen. “Especially your scarf.”_

_He was her man._

_Offering his arm, they strolled leisurely through the many rooms of the d’Auriac house, each more luxurious than the last. As wondrous as it was, however, Marie could not shake the unease that rose in her – she had seen the starving faces of the poor in Paris, the stress of grain and bread on mouths who could scarcely afford food for their children. But, as she reminded herself, she was not here for that. She and the young man came eventually to a terrace that was well-hidden and out of hearing._

_“Monsieur Bolton has many fine things to say about you,” he said with a wry smile and a shrug. “I shall not ask for specifics, of course, and I must apologize for requesting you travel this far for such a meeting.” He made a dismissive gesture, but his smile remained steadfast, if not a bit exasperated. “It appears I am not trusted in England, any I fear my face is known by too many._

_“I shall be frank; Bolton has a network of contacts in France and England through which he receives information regarding the war. I am one such contact.” He lowered his voice further still, so much so that Marie had to lean in just to hear him. “Bolton is aware of your standing in the Royal Army given your father’s service, and your access to what is otherwise unobtainable. He has requested that you retrieve information that could prove vital to their campaign and to send it across the Atlantic as soon as you are able, but only through the contacts he provides; he requests also that you retain whatever information is too dangerous for such passage, and to deliver it in a dossier to General Washington, in person, at his behest. Should the allegiance between America and France be consolidated – which I am sure it will be, and soon – then you shall have the aid of France also. The information of the Marquis de Lafayette is at your disposal; I shall give him your name should you wish, and he will aid you to the best of his ability.”_

_“When is this dossier to be completed by?” Marie asked. Her mind was already working, conjuring up old memories of military dinners, the faces of majors and commanders whose names she had long since forgotten._

_“There is no time as of yet. I presume you will have little warning when the time comes, however, so I would advise you to be ready at all times.”_

_She could not help the coy smile that rose to her lips. “Monsieur, I am always ready.”_

_He laughed, then, drinking what was left of his champagne. “I cannot say what will become of you once you reach the colonies,” he admitted. “But Washington is not stupid, nor is he particularly reckless.” He eyed her very carefully. “I cannot say I trust you, mademoiselle, but if what Bolton says is true, then you may be a great asset to us.”_

_“I have no love of the Crown,” she replied, tersely._

_“None of us do, it would seem. I am told you are quite a good shot, no?”_

_Her fingers itched inside their gloves and she twisted the stem of her glass to quieten them. “Quite.”_

_“Then I shall send a gift to your residence before I go, just in case you come to need it.”_

_The man did not give her his name, but she knew that she would not forget the fairness of his face nor the enthusiasm in his eyes; they spent little time together that night, but the words of revolution were murmured in her ear, and the flame that Bolton had kindled grew hotter. Stronger._

_As promised, her gift arrived not two days later. It was a plain wooden box, cornered and locked with silver, inside which sat a sturdy, intricately-crafted pistol. A note was attached to the handle. It read only one line._

Vive la Liberté.

_She smiled._

 

* * *

 

 

**Davenport Homestead, February 1785**

 

The skies grew dark with the promise of rain. They were black and low, and the sea churned just as grey and frightful. Connor could smell the rain before it came. The winds, too. The homestead continued on all the same, and George’s presence had become something normal; although the Morgans had been received with both wonder and suspicion, many were loath to see them leave. George had a strange, rough sort of charisma that, while overwhelming at times, eventually charmed all who came to know him. He was clever and good with his hands, and was book-smart in a way many of the others were not. He had a contagious love for learning and continued his endeavors with many of the residents, and with the ability to read and write Connor’s administrative tasks became a good sight easier. George aided him in that respect, too – he was quick of wit and had a good head on his shoulders, and sorted numbers better than most people Connor knew.

Connor had not spoken to Bethany after that day. In fact, he hadn’t even so much as approached her; something about her made him uneasy, and whenever he thought of her he remembered the only other spirit he had met. He thought of her, and suddenly found himself in the dark silence of his village longhouse, the air alight with fire and the voice of the unknown.

But she wasn’t a spirit, nor was she a ghost. She was flesh and blood, a woman like any other, though no matter how many times he tried to remind himself of that he could never shake the sight of her lying in that bed. The starkness of her face. The hawk-like sharpness of her eyes, the tightness of her expression that almost gave him the impression that she knew him.

He knew he had to get answers. His colleagues grew restless at the lack of information, and as desperate as it might have seemed he _knew_ these two strangers were tangled up in those affairs somehow. George was oblivious to what had happened to New York - he’d admitted that himself - but Bethany was riddled with the discomfort of a woman keeping secrets. It had taken only a glance for Connor to realize that.

And, so, Connor ended up returning to the inn. By then – a few weeks after that first eventful evening – the Morgans’ presence there felt somewhat permanent. Corinne had taken a liking to both the girl and her father, as had Oliver, though he was less ready to admit it; Bethany had not wandered farther than the inn’s yard. Connor had never seen her.

“Evening, Connor!” Oliver greeted him when he ducked into the inn. The place was teeming with patrons, mostly travelers passing through the frontier. Connor did not recognize most of them. “How can I help you, my lad?”

He nodded to the stairs. “I would like to see Miss Morgan,” he said.

“Go right on up, then,” Oliver replied, wiping out a tankard with his rag. “Ain’t heard a peep out of her since noon.”

Connor wove his way among the tables and up the stairs, away from the din and the choke of lamp-smoke; he knew which door was hers, and he went to it, pausing for a moment before knocking.

“Come in!”

Connor let himself in before he could have second thoughts.

Bethany sat in a chair by the window. The room was dark, lit only by the final dredges of daylight clinging to the horizon; she seemed to be looking at nothing in particular, startled from a daze by his coming. A book lay in her lap, but he doubted she was reading it.

She looked at him, surprised, and the warmth drained from her face. “Oh.”

“I am sorry for interrupting,” Connor began, closing the door softly. “I was wondering if you were available to talk.”

After a heartbeat of startled silence, Bethany threw the blanket from her lap and rose to light the lamp by her bed. The stunned, frosted look from before was covered hastily by a smile just as put-upon as the first one she had given him. “Of course! Of course. You caught me daydreaming.” The laugh she gave him was flighty. He wondered if she was nervous. “Please, sit. Would you like some tea?”

Connor shook his head and sat down in a chair, which stood empty by the window, facing the one she had just been sitting in. “No, thank you.”

She had a strange voice to her. Her accent wasn’t really one he’d heard before – she didn’t sound as though she hailed from the Isles, nor did she sound as though she had grown up on American soil. He couldn’t place it and remembered how it had bothered him when they had met in Boston, too.

“I didn’t get a proper chance to thank you,” she said, sitting and drawing her blanket back onto her lap. She seemed far more alive than she had the last he had seen her, and the color had returned to her. She looked solid, now, and Connor was finally able to settle. Flesh and blood. “As I said before, any help I can give is yours.”

“I would not turn away someone in your position,” Connor replied. “And you do not seem like people given over to trouble.”

She gave him a wry smile. “We try.”

It was easier, now, talking to her. She listened attentively, her eyes somber beyond her years and never once wandering from his face.

“I understand you came from New York,” he began. At the mention of New York her face became very serious, and he knew he had touched upon something. “I am interested in what brought you here, and what put that wound in you.”

Bethany was quiet for a long moment. Thinking. Her eyes drifted from him and fixed upon the window, staring out at the grey evening beyond. He did not follow her gaze and instead allowed his own eyes to remain fixed on her face, watching it for any flutter of information.

“You are aware of the people’s woes there, I assume,” she began. “New York has been running hot, and the winter was hard, especially since the strain of the war still dogs us. Grain is scarce and bread is expensive. People are hungry and angry and suspect sabotage by those still loyal to the king. Those who show allegiance to the crown are ousted from their homes, or their shops are burned; we pledge allegiance to nobody, my father and I. But that was treachery to them, I suppose.” She shrugged her shoulders and turned to him again, and her smile was back, though mirthless and forced, as it had been before. “Things had grown out of control the night we came here. Those who wanted no part of it were being dragged into the street. Even the tiniest suspicion was damning. I woke to it – the torchlight was so bright I thought it was daytime.”

“What happened?” he asked softly. The room was impossibly quiet; even the din from the tavern downstairs seemed a hundred miles away.

“They broke down our door and clubbed my father unconscious before he knew what was going on. I found him like that, see – I carried him away before any further harm could come to either of us, though I fear whatever we left in New York wasn’t afforded such mercy.”

Connor gestured to her abdomen. “But you _were_ harmed.”

Hesitantly, Bethany touched a hand to where her wound was. “Yes – as we fled the riot on horseback musket-fire began and I was caught by it. I don’t think I was targeted directly, but… well. It doesn’t matter now, I suppose.”

Connor could think of nothing to say. His thoughts were racing and, leaning his elbows against his knees, he tried to make sense of it. He repeated the letter to himself and tried to draw sense from the words. “Do you have any idea who organized the riot?”

Bethany barked with laughter; it was loud and unexpected and entirely mirthless. “Organize? Oh, no. There was nothing organized about that riot, I can say that with some certainty. It was chaos if I’ve ever seen it, the result of a collection of desperate, hungry people.”

Connor gritted his teeth. She was lying.

“I’m not sure what else to tell you,” Bethany said. Her nervousness was clear to him, now, especially in the unevenness of her voice and the slight dimple of her brow. He wanted to reassure her, but the words did not come, and so he settled for straightening up in his seat and giving her a smile – small and tight as it was – that he hoped was of some comfort. She did not smile back.

“I will not keep you any longer,” Connor said, rising. Ought he to take her hand in farewell? To bow? To say something?

In the end, he settled for nodding at her politely. He turned on his heel and left as quickly as he could, Bethany gazing after him all the while.

“What a funny man,” she said aloud when her father entered; George had nearly been thrown from the stairs as Connor barreled down them, quite ready to leave the cloying heat of the inn.

“Who, Connor?”

She nodded and touched a hand to her side. “Yes. What is his last name?”

George shrugged heavily and made for the desk, taking out a notebook from his satchel. “For what I’ve heard, he doesn’t have one. Godfrey was telling me that his father was an Englishman, but that he didn’t take his name.”

“His mother was a native?”

“Aye, and he wears that with pride, I think.”

Bethany mused over that. It made sense, then – many of the Iroquois forewent surnames. They had no need for them. She paused, her mouth open as though to speak, eyes distant.

George frowned at his daughter, both inquisitive and rather worried, before closing the door and going to the dresser. “He’s quite a character,” he agreed. “But if what I’ve heard is true, he’s a good man.”

“If his hospitality is anything to go by then I should say he is.” But she wrung her hands in her lap, glancing at the window. The night had descended fully over the land, shrouding the world in its veil. She could hear the screeches of the owls and see the distant flicker of lights. “I worry.”

“You always worry,” George chuckled.

“No, not like that – are we to stay here? Where do we go? Do we return to New York? How do we – ?”

George shook his head. “I don’t know, love. Once you’re better we can sort all that out.” He went to her and touched his hand to the top of her head. “It’ll be all right.”

 

Very few things made Connor as frustrated as ignorance. He despised not knowing things, especially things he _should_ know, above all else. And his conversation with Bethany Morgan had caused him more grief than anything, answering no questions and assuaging no curiosity whatsoever.

He sought to ride to New York, but on the day of his departure he received a letter from Santiago who bade him stay for a little while longer; they had scrounged up another scrap of correspondence that made their awareness of Connor very clear, and that his arrival to the city would be like shot to a powder keg. That frustrated him more than anything, and he very nearly rode out anyway.

 _Will you ever trust me?_ Santiago once asked him, her dark face shining in the sun. _One day you will learn to listen to what I say, Connor. You will trust that I know what I am doing._

 And so he remained, as much as it pained him.

He had more than enough work to keep him occupied, between keeping the homestead’s leger and working the Brotherhood’s books as well. There were clerks to do such work, of course, but Connor preferred to keep more sensitive matters for himself. Trust was a difficult thing for him to contend with.

Another fortnight passed with no word from New York aside from a brief letter or two from Santiago and Zenger, as well as a note from Dobby, who had no pressing news to deliver. The travelers that passed through the homestead cited no distress in New York, either, which allowed Connor a little bit of ease, though not much. He began to make preparations to ride there himself whether Santiago liked it or not, partly for Brotherhood work and partly because he needed to retrieve supplies for the house as well.

It took the most part of three weeks for Bethany’s wound to heal enough for travel. It was still tender, but Lyle was astounded by how rapidly she was healing; her pallid complexion had regained its color and her strength had returned to the point where she was able to help Corinne manage the inn.

“It seems a shame to send ‘em away,” Godfrey told Terry as they took tea be the mill. “Old George has done a whole lotta good round here, what with all the teaching.”

“And the merchandise,” Terry added. “I ain’t never seen the convoys in such order. I’ve been thinkin’ of adding another room to the place now that we’ve got some extra coin in our pockets.” He nodded in the direction of his home.

“D’you think Connor’ll send ‘em back to New York?”

“I did not plan to.”

The two men started so violently that Terry’s tea splashed across the back of his hand; hissing with the pain of it, he and Godfrey turned to find Connor standing just outside the tree line, his hood thrown back and his hair-beads glittering in the sun. He made his way towards them.

“You shouldn’t go ‘round eavesdroppin’,” Godfrey grumbled, the tips of his ears flushed pink.

“I was just passing. Why would you think I would send them away?”

Terry shrugged. “Now that the girl’s better, we thought -,”

“I never turn away people willing to work,” Connor said. “And George is working. He is doing very good work, actually. Do you want him to leave?”

“Lord, no!” Godfrey exclaimed. “Why we were just talkin’ ‘bout him, how he’s done us good – If you need a good word for him, Connor, me an’ Terry would be happy to put in a few.”

Connor regarded them. Truthfully, he had no plans to send the Morgans anywhere, especially if they did not want to go. That had never been his nature, and many of the homestead’s residents – if not _all_ of them – had come upon it by chance.

“We will let them decide.”

That, at least, seemed to be in the interest of everyone.

 

* * *

 

“Her name is Venus.”

Connor, not expecting a voice to rise so close by, turned abruptly on his heel to find Bethany Morgan standing in the shade of a great pine tree a few yards from the stable yard. She was watching him as he saw to the horses and doubtlessly saw the way he tended to the great mare she had brought to him.

“Venus?”

She made her way towards him, and Connor saw no discomfort nor any sign that her wound bothered her aside from the hand laid lightly against her busk. She reached the door of Venus’s stable and extended her hand; the horse gave one sniff before pressing her nose against Bethany’s palm and greeting her like a lovesick child.

“Yes. That’s her name.” Bethany hazarded a smile in his direction, nervous, a child testing the water. “I named her without thinking, but she responded to it, so I never bothered to change it.” She seemed abashed by it.

“She is beautiful.” As though she knew he was talking about her, Venus glanced at Connor and whickered, stamping gently against the ground and tossing her head. Bethany chuckled.

“Yes, and doesn’t she know it. It was why I chose that name – Venus, goddess of love and beauty, a creature of immense power and charisma.” Bethany reached out and stroked the slash of white against Venus’s muzzle. “She likes you.”

As Connor looked at Bethany’s hand perched upon Venus’s brow, he noticed a long, silvery scar running from knuckle to fingertip on one of her fingers. He very nearly asked her about it, but figured that it would be unwise and prying, so he didn’t. Instead, he said, “She seems to be happy here, especially now you are with her.”

“She didn’t like the city,” Bethany replied. She turned and leaned her back against the stable door, folding her arms across her waist. “She’s not easily spooked, but she becomes very anxious if she’s cooped up for too long.”

Connor could understand that.

Just as he had before, though a little more conscious now he had an audience, Connor led Venus out into the yard. She set about prancing around him, behaving even more outrageously now that she knew Bethany was watching. Connor, just as he had done many times before, tried to swing up onto her back, but she refused to stop for him, or even slow down, and sent him skidding across the dirt. Bethany stood leaning against the stable door, cheeks pink with the still-chilly springtime winds, the faintest of smiles upon her mouth.

“She’s teasing you,” the girl called after Connor was thrown yet again. He picked himself up, a little embarrassed at having been cast from Venus’s back in full view of another, but Bethany seemed to be very familiar with the mare’s behavior and saw no fault in him for it. She let out a shrill little whistle and Venus trotted over to her as would a small dog; Bethany reached out and smacked her nose. Venus nipped at her fingers in response. “Behave,” Bethany told her sternly.

Venus glanced back at Connor and, tossing her head with a derisive snort, made her way back over to him and, upon reaching him, stood perfectly still.

Hesitantly, Connor reached out and placed a hand against her flank. He used his other hand to lever himself upwards, and before he knew it, he was astride her broad, sleek back. Venus made not a step until Bethany made the same strange chirping noise, at which point she began to respond to him. She steered beautifully, and just by riding her Connor could tell she had never been broken. She rode because she wanted to.

After riding her around the yard for a few minutes, Connor slid from her back and fed her a lump of sugar from his pocket as thanks. He swung open the gate, letting her thunder out into the woodland pastures, her coat gleaming in the sun. Bethany stood by the gate.

“A strange horse,” Connor murmured. “You have an uncanny way with her.”

“She didn’t trust you,” Bethany said.

“What changed her mind?”

“I told her she could.”

Connor looked at her and she shrugged. He shut the gate, and the two of them down to the road and towards the manor.

“How is your wound?” Connor asked, nodding to where her hand lay over her belly.

“Healing, slowly but surely.” She looked vaguely pained but entirely more comfortable than the last time he’d seen her. “Although if Corinne asks me to peel another potato I think I may scream.”

Connor laughed, earning a frown from her.

“Are you laughing at me, sir?”

“No,” he assured her hurriedly. “Not at all. I… I am planning a trip to New York, if you would like to accompany me.” He wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, asking her to go with him. Was it too forward? Would she be abhorred that he would ask her to be alone with him for so long? His worried mounted, but before they could reach a crescendo Bethany’s frown softened and gave way to something akin to interest. They came to a stop beneath the deep shadows of the manor’s eaves.

“I should be glad for it, provided I do not have to lay eyes on a single unpeeled potato,” she told him, and he sighed in relief. “Are you sure it’s quite all right I come?

“Of course. It is mostly errands, which will take less time with two people.” He shrugged, offering a smile that felt clumsy on his face. “I do not often have company on such trips.”

Seeing such tender intrigue on Bethany’s somber face was a strange thing; it almost seemed out-of-place, what with the straight line of her brow and the serious set of her mouth, but it afforded her a lightness that Connor had not seen before, taking the bite out of her suspicion and her sternness.

“Beth, there you are!” Connor and Bethany turned to see George toiling up the hill to the manor, hat in his hand, waving. He arrived a little short of breath, his face pleasantly ruddy. “Ah, Connor, hello to you too, of course.” He turned back to Bethany. “Should you be out of bed?”

Bethany gave him a long-suffering look and replied, “If I remained in bed any longer I would have died.”

George looked between them, unsure what to make of it; eventually he dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief and smiled, looking truly relieved for the first time since Connor had met him. “Well, I’m glad you’ve regained your energy, at least. Don’t go making trouble for Connor, now, you hear?”

“I’ll try my best.”

Seeing this push-and-pull of humor between George and his daughter made Connor wonder; he wondered after his own father, after his mother, wondered what life might have been like if they’d survived this long. If they had been afforded better circumstances. _Kinder_ circumstances. Connor had never had family, not since he left his village, not since he’d murdered his own father. He had Achilles, certainly, and the others of the homestead, who he considered as close to his heart as kin, but… it wasn’t the same. He coveted the easy familiarity of George and Bethany Morgan. He envied it.

“Well,” Bethany was saying. “I shan’t keep you any longer, Mr. Connor. When shall we leave?”

“I had planned to leave tomorrow morning, if that pleases you.”

She gave him another one of those barely-there smiles, nodding. “That is very agreeable.”

George, his face stormy, glowered at Bethany. “You oughtn’t travel so soon, Beth,” he warned her. “But Lord knows I won’t be able to stop you. Just don’t make too much trouble for Connor.”

“I will be the perfect lady, I promise.”

Her father offered his arm, and she took it, giving Connor a polite nod before allowing George to assist her down the pathway. Connor gazed after them, listening to their voices as they rose along the wind. He turned, then, back to the manor, which rather than being filled with a family as it should have been, stood empty.


	6. NOTICE

Hello everyone! This fic is currently undergoing heavy revision and rewriting; the current version is essentially a first draft, and upon review I noticed a whole network of plot/spacial/time errors, as well as a bunch of things I really needed to fix up. So this fic is on hold indefinitely until I can refine it a little more. Thank you for your patience!


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